Serena and Beryl
by Tigress of the Moon
Summary: This is a parody of the short story The Devil and Tom Walker I had to write for an English assignment. It came out pretty funny! Enjoy!


Serena and Beryl  
  
Disclamier: I don't own Sailor Moon or "The Devil and Tom Walker"  
  
A/N: I wrote this for an English assignment sophomore year. Our class basically had to rewrite "The Devil and Tom Walker" to make it more modern day. I told by teacher it was going to be based on Sailor Moon, but I don't think she listened, because I got an "A" on it because she thought it was "original." This just goes to show you how oblivious teachers are..Well, enjoy!  
  
A few miles outside the center of the city of Tokyo, there is this one street corner, where there used to lie, the center of a so called "haunted" forest. No one thought anything of cutting down a useless piece of woodland for the advancing town, so when the time came, the forest was destroyed. Now, it is said, that the spirit that used to haunt the demolished forest, now resides on this street corner. Sometimes, people have said, it takes the form of a bird, siting on the telephone wire, or a person sitting, sulking on the stone walk, while other times it looks uninhabited. It is believed, though, that the spirit inhabits just this one spot, even today, making miserable the lives of people who by accident, ran into it, or disturbed it in some way.  
  
Serena normally passed this corner every day, never thinking anything of it, but today, she was especially late, and she really wasn't taking in her surroundings, as she passed the street corner...  
  
"Ahhhhh!" she screamed, as she looked down at her watch, yet again. Serena was your regular, junior high student, 14-year-old girl, who happened to be abnormally clumsy and always late for school. "I am going to be soo late!" she wailed, still staring at her watch, not noticing the woman who stood before her.  
  
"Ugh!" Serena said, as she fell backward, landed hard on the sidewalk. "Ahhhhh!" she started to wail. "Why do I have to be such a klutz! It's not fair!" She had had such a bad day already, that she didn't care how bad she looked now wailing. Not only was she for sure late now, her little brother, Sammy, had covered her cat Luna in glow-in-the-dark green paint this morning, and she hadn't had time to make her lunch, not to mention the fact she was still upset over Darien. She had a huge crush on him, and all he thought of her, was that she had "meatballs" on the top of her head (her hair) and that she was a total klutz. "It's not fair! I'm never going to get Darien if I keep this up," and then she began to wail louder than before.  
  
"I think I might be able to help you," said the lady who she had just bumped into.  
  
"Yeah, right! And just might you be?" asked Serena with a sniffle.  
  
"I am Beryl and this is my forest....corner...Well, it used to be my forest, until they cut it down, a long, long time ago."  
  
"I'm sorry, but I really have to go," Serena said. "I'm already going to be late, and if I'm any later, I'm going to have detention for a week!"  
  
"Stupid little girl," said Beryl. "You really don't know who I am do you? Then I guess I'll have to show you." With that, she raised her arm, and swung it in a half circle in from of her and Serena. Instantly, time stopped, no one moved, no one blinked, only her and Beryl. Serena, amazed, looked down at her watch and realized that it had stopped too.  
  
"Whoa," was the only remark that Serena could make after she looked up from her watch. This is so weird, she thought to herself.  
  
"Look around you, at all the trees...err...I mean rocks." Serena then noticed that carved into the rocks were the names of certain people from her town. People that mysteriously come across an old family fortune, or by some, stroke of luck, won the lottery. "Now that you can't be any later than you already are, I have a proposition for you."  
  
"Wha-what?" Serena asked, her voice unsteady.  
  
"I can make Darien yours. Make him love you, and only you, and never look at any girl other than you...For a price."  
  
"What?" she asked, fear present in her voice.  
  
"Well, other than you soul...You must do favors for me whenever I call upon you."  
  
"And how will I know when you are calling me?"  
  
"Trust me, you'll know."  
  
"Well, I'll think about it, but right now, I really should be going."  
  
"Fine, so be it," said Beryl, and faster than Serena could blink, the world was in motion again, Beryl had disappeared, and she was standing in front of her school, right as the bell rang. Serena thought that all of this was terribly odd, but she still ran into her school to get to homeroom, just in time to get a detention.  
  
***  
  
During lunch that day, Serena explained to one of her best friends, Raye, what had happened to her at the corner that morning...  
  
"I've got bad feelings about this," Ray told Serena. "I normally pick up bad vibes myself when I walk by that corner in the morning, but I never really thought about it before." But, in actuality, she was thinking the opposite. Ray figured that if she told Serena not to go see Beryl, then she could go see Beryl in her place, and have Darien all for herself, and leave Serena in the dust.  
  
"You really think so Ray? Because I was thinking about going back there."  
  
Ray, hearing her name, snapped back from her thoughts and said, "No, I would stay away from there if I were you, but in the mean time, I think I'll go down there and check it out myself."  
  
"No Ray, don't! I don't think that's such a good idea."  
  
"No way! I'm leaving directly after school today, to go check it out."  
  
"But...," and then Serena was cut short by the bell signifying the end of lunch period, and Ray and Serena had to head off to their separate classes.  
  
***  
  
The next day, Serena didn't see Ray in school during first period or lunch. She started to become worried when she wasn't in her last period class with her either.  
  
"This is not good," Serena mumbled to herself as she hurried out of school. "Ray should've been at school today. I better go see if she stayed home." But when Serena asked Ray's grandfather if he had seen her lately, he said no, that she had said that she was going to sleep over her house, and that now, he honestly had no idea where she she could be.  
  
Serena then started looking around the town for any signs of Raye. She checked in all of her favorite areas, the mall, the karate studio, the arcade, everywhere, and she couldn't find her. She then decided to go see if Beryl was at the corner, and of course, she wasn't. Just when she needed her, she wasn't there.  
  
But there was somebody at the corner, or something rather. Serena noticed that there was a crow hopping around on the ground, a fairly young one too, and yet for some reason, it reminded her of Raye.  
  
"That's really odd," Serena said, bending down to get a closer look at the bird. "You remind me of Ray...I mean, other than the fact that she loves crows...How weird." Just as Serena stood up, a huge hawk or eagle, she couldn't tell, swooped down from the sky, and carried the crow away in its talons. She heard the crow make a ear piercing cry as the huge predatory bird dug its talons into its flesh.  
  
The bird circled over head for a few minutes tearing at the carcass, before it flew off. Serena then noticed that something was falling towards her from the direction the predatory bird had headed off in. A minute later, the head of a head crow, struck the ground in a splatter of blood at her feet. For a split second, the head flashed to that of Ray's and then it disappeared altogether.  
  
"This is the work of Beryl," said Serena, with a disgusted look on her face, and not being able to stand the sight she just saw, she headed for home, thinking about the tragedy that had just occurred.  
  
Although, as she thought about it more, she wondered if it really was a loss. After all, Raye was constantly making fun of her, calling her names, and stressing that she was a flake. The more and more she thought about it, she was actually happy about Raye's death. Maybe it was actually a good thing, so when Serena went to bed that night, she had no trouble at all falling asleep.  
  
The next day, before school, Serena, for once in her life, actually got up early to go see Beryl, to tell her, her decision.  
  
Since she didn't see her standing at the corner, she started to call out her name. "Beryl!" she began to yell, despite the fact that about 25 people began to stare at her, calling into empty space. In fact, someone called the cops, but they didn't arrive until everything was over, and Serena was already gone, in her first period class at school.  
  
"Beryl! Beryl! Beryl, I know you're here,...Somewhere...I hope...Really hope...Beryl!"  
  
"Ahhh! My ears! What is it? What do you want?" said Beryl as she hopped over, and sat on the stone wall behind Serena.  
  
Serena struggled to climb up the wall, succeeding only after falling off twice, and ruining her new skirt.  
  
"I accept your offer," said Serena, once she was finally sitting on the wall, next to Beryl, panting rapidly because of the climb.  
  
"Um...okay...,"said Beryl, and they shook hands on it.  
  
Then, for a split second, Serena could swear she saw her name "Serena Tsukino," carved into the stone nearest her. After, there was a brilliant flash of light, and she was in front of her school once again. She quickly ran in, not knowing the importance of the act she had just done.  
  
Beryl hadn't actually hold her what the "favors" were going to be, but every once in a while, Beryl's voice echoed in her thoughts, telling her to do certain, mischievous tasks.  
  
Later that day, she met up with Darien, and expecting him to call her "meatball head," she almost fell over when he asked her out on a date instead. It was then that Serena had realized that Beryl had kept her promise, and now Darien was hers, and hers alone. Serena soon regretted this though because it was a false love, a fake love, not the true, love of the heart, that Serena had wanted. This made her become bitter, causing her to stay home, away from society most of the time, just her and Darien.  
  
The "favors" that Beryl made her do weren't much better. Fifty years later, Serena had gruesomely murdered 51 people, spread horrible viruses that killed even more people, and started war between Japan and China. Serena became truly bitter, and no one took any notice of the way she mysteriously disappeared.  
  
The most common belief is that a whole opened up in the air, around ground level, and a man with a sinister smile, and long silver hair, pulled her down into a black abyss, never to be seen again.  
  
A/N: Scary, huh? Um...Hope you liked it! And just think, an "A" for this? I found it amusing, lol. Well, please R&R. It's just up here for kicks, after all. Oh, and if you haven't read, "The Devil and Tom Walker," then that probabl didn't make much sense. Oh well. Ja ne! 


End file.
